AMERICAN TOADYISM ON TAP.

With more barbaric mummery, flummery and vulgar waste

of wealth than characterized even the late Marlborough-

Vanderbilt wedding, Nicholas Two-Eyes was crowned

Emperor of the rag-tag and bob-tail of creation,

officially known as "all the Russias." Nick has a nice easy

job at a salary considerably in excess of ye average

country editor, and he gets it all in gold roubles instead of

post-oak cord-wood and green watermelons, albeit his

felicity is slightly marred by an ever-present fear that he

may inadvertently swallow a few ounces of arsenic or sit

down on an infernal machine.

Nick is emphatically an emperor who emps. He isn't

bothered with do-nothing congresses or Populist

politicians who want him impeached. When he saith to a

man "come," he cometh p. d. q.; to another "go" he

getteth a hustle on him that would shame a pneumatic tire.

Nick is the greatest monarch "what they is." He is the

divinely ordained Chief Gyasticutus of that motley

aggregation of tallow-munchers and unwashed ignorami

whose very existence is a menace to modern civilization.

The Goths and Visigoths were models of cleanliness and

avatars of intelligence compared with a majority of the

seventy different breeds of bipedal brutes who acknowledge

the rule of the Romanoffs. A Russian peasant smells like

the Chicago river on a summer's day, or Tolstoi's "Kreutzer

Sonata." He's more disagreeable to the olfactories than old

John Jacob Astor's hide house, from whose effluvia sprung

the master spirits of Gotham's Four Hundred. He will eat

what would send a coyote howling out of the country. To

him a jug of train-oil were as angel-food, a keg of stale

soap-grease a ferial feast. During his entire life he enjoys

but two baths--one when he is born, the other when he's

buried. A religious fanatic, he obeys but one scriptural

injunction--"Be fruitful and multiply." Even the Russian

ladies wash only to suit the dresses they wear--high-necked

or decollete. The average Slav is as stupidly

ignorant as any Agency Indian. He respects no law but

that of blind force. His Magna Charta is the dynamite

bomb. He is courageous with the bravery of the brute,

which has no conception of life's sacredness. Doubtless

the rule of the bayonet is the only government possible for

such a barbarous people--and the Romanoffs have not

allowed it to rust.

The Czar is the immediate ruler of nearly 130,000,000

semi-savages, his lightest word their supreme law, while the

chiefs of the robber hordes of Central Asia

acknowledge him their official head. Such

tremendous power in the hands of a weak-minded,

vacillating monarch like Nicholas II--descended from

Catherine the Courtesan, and having in his veins the blood

of cranks--may well cause western Europe to lie awake.

Bonaparte declared that in a hundred years the continent

would be all Russian or all Republican--by which he meant

that unless this nation of savages in esse and Vandals

in posse were stamped out it would imitate the example

of Alaric and Attila and precipitate such another intellectual

night as that known as the Dark Ages. In western Europe

Republicanism is making but slight progress, while in the

East the power of the Great White Khan is rapidly

increasing. In a struggle between the semi-savagery of the

East and the civilization of the West, China and Turkey

would be the natural and inevitable allies of the Czar.

Small wonder that the Great First Consul trudged home

from Moscow with a heavy heart!

Some faint idea of the savage ignorance of Russia may be

had from the history of the Siberian exiles and the fiendish

persecutions of the Jewish people. Siberia is the Ice Hell of

the old Norse mythologists, into which men, women and

children have been indiscriminately cast on the bare

suspicion of desiring to better the wretched condition of the

Russian people. Its horrors, which have long been a

hideous nightmare to civilized men, need no description

here. The very name of Siberia causes humanity to

shudder--it casts a shadow on the sun! The experience of

the Jews in Russia was akin to that of the early settlers in

America, who were exposed to the unbridled ferocity of the

Aborigines; yet the so-called Christian nations dared do no

more than petition the Czar that these savage atrocities

should cease--futile prayers to the hog-headed god of the

Ammonites!

The young man who has just been crowned at Moscow at

an expense of some millions, and whose emblem of

authority is ornamented with rubies as large as eggs and

ablaze with 2,564 costly diamonds--while half his people

are feeding on fetid offal--is a weak-faced pigmy who would

probably be peddling Russia's favorite drunk promoter over

a pine bar had he not chanced to be born in the purple.

Having been spawned in a royal bed--perchance the same

in which his great gran'dame Catherine was wont to receive

her paramours--he becomes the most powerful of princes--

haloed with "that divinity which doth behedge a king"--and

all the earth rejoices to do him honor.

For months past wealthy Americans have been hastening

to Moscow to enjoy the barbaric fete and perchance

pick up a greasy count or scorbutic duke for their

daughters. They were not permitted to witness the

coronation, but they could look at the Kremlin, stand in the

street and watch the Czar and his wooden-faced wife sail

by in their chariot of gold, and perhaps be cuffed out of the

way by a court chamberlain. Surely that were felicity

enough for fools! Our boasted Republican government,

whose shibboleth has ever been the equality of all men--

that the harvester of the lowly hoop-pole stands on a parity

with a prince swinging a gilded scepter and robbing a

poverty-stricken people--considered that its paid

representatives in Russia would be unequal to the task of

spilling sufficient slobber over the chief representative of

"divine right," the great arch-enemy of human liberty, and

sent special envoys to assist at the ceremony. These

haughty American sovereigns were not permitted, however,

to enter the sacred presence of the Czar attired in their

regal robes--the dress of American gentlemen; but were

required to dike out like English flunkeys at a fancy feed.

"Evening coat with plain metal buttons, white vest,

knee-breeches, black silk stockings, no ornaments"--such

was the ukase issued to the envoys of Uncle Sam by the

royal seneschal. They "obeyed with alacrity." Of course

they did. Had they been ordered to appear in their shirt-

tails, one flap dyed green and the other yellow, their legs

painted like barber-poles and wearing asses' ears, they

would have "obeyed with alacrity"--without ever a thought

of advising the seneschal to go to Siberia. The rear

admiral in command of the Mediterranean fleet was ordered

to Kronstadt with his flagship; sent to attend the coronation

"as the naval envoy of the United States"--a journey of

some thousands of miles at a minimum expense of $1,000

a day, to watch a young dude stick a million-dollar dog

muzzle on his own foolish pate, while his female running

mate cavorted around with a dozen dudines supporting her

tail-feathers! And "Jones he pays the freight"--puts up for

this egregious folly. It has cost the American tax-payers a

quarter of a million dollars to have their mis-representatives

prancing around the Kremlin in short-stop pants and silk

stockings, bowing and scraping like a Pullman porter who

has just received a dollar tip from some reckless Tezsan.

We have nothing in common with Russia. One government

is the antithesis of the other. They are "on friendly terms"

because they have practically no intercourse. Russia has

no American possessions upon which we can pull the

foolish manifesto of the erstwhile Monroe. There's no trade

between the two countries--hasn't been since Russia

unloaded her Alaskan glaciers upon us at a fancy price. It

would have been eminently proper had Minister

Breckinridge presented himself--togged out in his best

Arkansas jeans instead of being attired like a troubadour--to

wish Nick exemption from the Nihilists and express

the hope that the occasion wouldn't swell his head;

but there was absolutely no excuse for sending warships on

an expensive cruise, and special envoys 5,000 miles to

make unmitigated asses of themselves.

The unpalatable fact is that we are a nation of toad-eaters.

President Cleveland is, in this respect at least, eminently

representative of the American people. The axiom that

"like takes to like" accounts for his popularity. It was that

which enabled him to beat Jim Blaine. When the Grand

Duke Alexis was in this country, upper-tendom slopped over

him so persistently and offensively that the young man

incontinently fled. The adulation he received from American

belles made him such a misogynist that he never got

married. The girl who got an introduction to the Duke was

pointed out for years thereafter as an especial favorite of

fortune. The obituary of a Louisville lady who died a short

time ago contained the startling announcement that she

had actually danced with the Duke. Every chappie who

was permitted to pay for a mint julep absorbed by this

subject of a crack-brained Czar secured a certificate to that

effect and had it framed.

In 1892, when more than the usual number of Russians

were going hungry to bed, America undertook to abrogate

the law of the survival of the fittest by sending the starving

wretches a ship-load of provisions. Dr. T. DeWitt Talmage,

Dr. Louis Klopsch and other prominent Americans were

sent over as commissioners to give out the grub. While in

Russia they were permitted, as a special concession, to

speak to the Caesarovitch, who afterwards succeeded to

the crown. Of course these American Sovereigns were

"overcome with such condescension," could "hardly get

their breath"--even in short pants. They all wrote it up for

the American press, and now Dr. Klopsch is

rehearsing every detail of that important event--the

crowning felicity of his life. He tells us how the

commissioners "received full instructions as to dress"; what

a "bountiful repast" they enjoyed with the crown prince's

servants--while millions were starving to death; how they

cooled their heels in the hall for an hour or two while their

invisible host finished his cigar; how their "hearts fluttered"

when the seneschal gave them their final instructions in

court etiquette--not to expectorate on the carpet or scratch

the furniture--then trotted them in; how the crown prince

graciously permitted them to stand with uncovered heads

for a few moments in his august presence, and then

managed to get rid of them without actually kicking them

down stairs! He "shook hands" with the party as a signal

for them to pull their freight. And to this good day Drs.

Talmage and Klopsch will not use toilet paper with the hand

that has been pressed by royalty! But the charity

commissioners wreaked a terrible revenge on the crown

prince--whose starving people they were feeding--for thus

insulting American manhood; they sent him a handsomely

bound copy of Talmage's book! The fact that he has not

broken off diplomatic relations with the United States may

be accepted, however, as prima facie evidence that he

has not yet read it. Perhaps he added insult to injury by

sending it to the Siberian exiles. The Czaritza, or Empress,

is a grand-daughter of Queen Victoria. She is rather

handsome, but her face, like that of all those born to the

house of Hanover is expressionless as a clothing store

dummy, hard as a blue-steel hatchet. Princess Alice, as

she was known in England, was a very devout Protestant;

but she promptly abjured the religion in which she was

raised and changed her name to Alexandra Theodorovna

for the blessed privilege of sharing an emperor's bed and

board. Thrift is a characteristic of Queen Victoria's

kids, and their religious scruples count for naught when

weighed against a crown.

* * *

THROWING STONES AT CHRIST.

Are you throwing stones at Christ and the Christian

Cause?

Pause, reflect before you answer. Not all the stones are

thrown by the Atheist, the Agnostic, the Infidel. No, the

most cruel stones, the ones that wound most deeply, are

thrown from the pulpit itself.

The kiss of Judas strikes deeper than the spear of the

Roman legionary; the denial of Peter is more cruel than the

Crown of Thorns.

Are you Throwing Stones at Christ and the Christian

Cause?

You in the Amen Corner stand forth and answer me. Drop

that catechism! release that credo! take your lips from that

crucifix! Now look me in the eye and speak the words of

truth and soberness: Are you a property owner? Have you

buildings rented to keepers of dives and bagnios? Do you

come here on Sunday and pray the Lord to protect the

young from temptation while you are the silent partner of

criminals? Have you ever contributed to send missionaries

to Madagascar money that was received from people

whose business it is to debauch your neighbor's sons and,

if possible, degrade his daughters? No? Thank God for

that. Do you know of any member of this church who is so

guilty? You suspect as much? Then why do you not go on

your knees to him and beg him to turn from his evil ways?

Do you not know that by keeping silent you tacitly endorse

his infamy--that you bring the Christian cause into

contempt; that you make it a byword and a reproach--that

you are Throwing Stones at Christ?

No; do not sit down yet. What are your worldly

possessions? How much did that diamond in your shirt-

front cost? What was the expense of that costume worn by

the woman who worships at your side? You surprise me!

Worth fifty, a thousand dollars!--wearing diamonds, buying

$1,000 dresses--for what? To wear to church--in which to

worship Him who had not where to lay his head! And a

thousand people in this one city alone in abject poverty--

"And the greatest of these is Charity." What a cruel stone

is Selfishness to Throw at Christ!

Is that your minister in immaculate broadcloth and shiny

boots, turning the leaves of his Bible with lily-fingers?

Pardon me that I did not recognize him. You see I have

been reading of John the Baptist with his raiment of camel's

hair,--of Christ with his single garment, tramping barefoot,

unshaven and unshorn over Judea's blazing hills.

Stand up, thou vicegerent of the Hebrew carpenter, and let

me question thee: You will not? I have no authority? Yet

publicans and sinners questioned thy Master, and He

answered freely and with all gentleness. Art thou greater

than He?

Are you Throwing Stones at Christ and the Christian Cause?

Be careful,--think well before you answer. In a minister of

God a mistake in this matter were little better than a crime.

Are you inculcating the spirit of Christ or Belial--of Love or

Hate? What do ye when mocked, reviled, your purposes

called in question? Do you go to the mocker, extend to him

a brother's hand and strive by moral suasion to lead him

out of the depths of everlasting darkness into the

bright effulgence of heavenly Day? Do you turn the other

cheek to the smiter and pray, "Father, forgive them, they

know not what they do"? Or do you mount the pulpit with a

splenetic heart and, with frantic gestures and a voice

hoarse with passion denounce the criticism as "infernal

rubbish"?

Are you seeking the salvation of souls or notoriety? Are

you striving to foment discord in your community or cast oil

upon the troubled waters? Are you striving to establish on

earth the universal brotherhood of Man and common

fatherhood of God, or Throwing Stones at Christ and the

Christian Cause from the cover of a canting hypocrisy?

Do you strive when criticised to transfer the criticism from

yourself to the Savior? Do you brand men who dare to

differ from you as blasphemers,--as though you were one

with God and that to question your superior wisdom and

goodness were equal to deny the Almighty? Do you, by

presumption where you should be meek, by belligerency

where you should act the peacemaker, by dogmatism

where you should humbly seek the light, by denunciation

where you should propitiate, call down the world's contempt

on the cause you profess to serve--Cast Stones at Christ?

It is Written, "Judge not lest ye be judged." Do you Always

heed the law?--carefully refrain from resolving yourself into

an inquisitorial court,--becoming both prosecutor and judge

and condemning those who chance to differ from you?

"Why so hot, little man?" The world rolled on, oh so many

weary years before the Fates kindly sent thee to set it right;

it will go on much in the same old way after both thee and

thy work have been forgotten.

To the stones cast at Christ by professed unbelievers we

need give but little heed. They rain harmless as

Parthian shafts on the shield of Achilles. Never was

atheistical book written, never was infidel argument penned

that touched the core of any religion, Christian or Pagan.

They but serve as driving sand of the desert to scour the

eating rust from the Christian armor. Seldom indeed does

the avowed infidel cast a stone at Christ,--he contents

himself with holding up to the world's scorn the mummeries

in which dogmatizers have invested the teachings of the

grandest man that ever died for truth. God created nothing

in vain. Even the atheist has his uses; nay, even the

splenetic preacher may fill an important niche in the great

world's economy--may be a real blessing in disguise.

Very remarkable is it that Christ's holy cause best

prospered, was purest, most powerful for good when most

persecuted, "The blood of the martyrs was the seed of the

church." From the auto da fe arose the anthem that

thrilled the Pagan heart. From prison cells poured forth

paeans of praise that caused princes to kiss the cross.

From the outlawed conventicle went forth a holy zeal that

carried millions to the throne of grace,--from the gloomy

midnight meeting there burst a light that illumed the world.

The stones cast by avowed enemies were the steps by

which the Cause of Christ mounted from poverty and

obscurity to thrones and wealth, to name and fame,--the

wings with which it encircled the great round globe, the

power that enabled it to break down the barriers of the

most obdurate hearts.

It is the stones cast by professed friends--the stones of

Selfishness and Pride, of Intolerance and Vain-glory,--of

Hate and Discord masquerading in the garb of Love and

Law--that cause the wounds on Calvary to bleed afresh, the

tears in Gethsemane to flow anew, the Crown of Thorns

to once more burn the throbbing brow, the scourge to

fall across the naked shoulders of the Son of God.

Are you Throwing Stones at Christ and His Cause?

* * *

LOOKING BACKWARD.

When it comes to "Looking Backward," Bellamy isn't in it

a little bit with Prof. Herman V. Hilprecht. The retrospective

glance of the latter covers a period of at least 11,000 years;

and what is of infinitely more importance, it is that of a

learned paleologist instead of a sensation-mongering

empiric. The Professor has succeeded in lifting a corner of

that black veil which hangs between the prehistoric and the

present, in affording us a fleeting glimpse of our fellow man

as he appeared long ages before the birth of Abraham. He

has demonstrated that man has been a civilized animal

much longer than is popularly supposed--that at least 5,000

years before the supposed advent of Adam he not only

lived sociably in cities and had gods and kings, but was

able to read and write! For eight years past the Professor

and his co-laborers, under the patronage of the University

of Pennsylvania, have been carrying on their explorations.

The site of Nippur, the ancient capital of Kengi, later known

as Babylonia, is the scene of their labors. Hitherto Nippur

has been supposed to have been the world's oldest city;

but the excavations made not only prove that it rose upon

the ruins of others, but affords some knowledge of a long

line of kings who lived so long ago that their very names

were forgotten before the flight of the Israelites from Egypt,

or even the building of the Tower of Babel.

"What is the story of this buried past?

Were all its doors flung wide,

For us to search its rooms?

And we to see the race, from first to last,

And how they lived and died."

Sargon is the most ancient Chaldean monarch mentioned in

the Bible, and hitherto archaeologists have agreed that

he was a fiction; but the Professor has not only proven that

he had a habitation as well as a name, but has catalogued

some thirty of his predecessors. Science has amply

demonstrated the existence of man upon the earth long

before the psychozoic era of the Biblical cosmogony; but

Prof. Hilprecht is the first to demonstrate the high antiquity

of his civilization. To the average man this will appear

neither more interesting nor profitable than a two-headed

calf or petrified corpse; but to the philosophic mind it affords

much food for reflection. We have presumed that we could

trace the history of man back to the time when he began to

practice the art of writing, as distinguished from the

transference of thought by crude pictorials--that our

prehistoric progenitor was simply a savage. It now appears

that people may build indestructible temples, and kings and

priests write intelligently on imperishable material, and the

nation be as utterly forgotten as though it had never

existed. With these facts in mind, it were curious to

speculate on what the world 11,000 years hence will know

of our now famous men--such, for instance, as Cleveland

and McKinley! What will the historian of that faraway time

have to say of Mark Hanna? Printing has been called "the

art preservative"; but is it? Suppose the priests of Bel--that

deity who antedates by so many centuries the Jewish

Jehovah--had committed the history of their temples to

"cold type" instead of graving it upon sacred vases:

Would Prof. Hilprecht and other Assyriologists be

deciphering it to-day? Printing has substituted flimsy paper

for parchment just as the pen substituted parchment for

waxen tablets, as the stylus substituted the latter for the far

more enduring leaflet of torrified clay. Imagine the effect of

11,000 years upon a modern library! Where will the

archaeologist of the year 12,896 turn for the history of our

time--where search for those "few immortal names that

were not born to die"? Oral transmission of historic data,

such as prevails among savages, such as prevailed among

the Hellenes in the age of Homer, has been supplanted by

the press. Long before Macaulay's New Zealander stands

on a broken arch of London bridge to sketch the ruins of St.

Paul's, every book now extant will have perished. Will they

be continuously reproduced, and thus, like the human race

itself, run ever on? Quien sabey? Eras of barbarism

have overtaken civilizations as pretentious as our own--

intellectual nights in which the patiently acquired learning of

ages was lost. Petrifaction as in China, retrogression

begotten of luxury as in Athens, submersion beneath an

avalanche of human debris as in Rome, ignorance-breeding

despoliation as in Ireland--these be the lions in the path of

civilization. No race or nation of which we have any record

has avoided a recrudescence of barbarism for an hundred

generations. A few centuries of our wasting climate

obliterates inscriptions on brass and wrecks the proudest

monuments of marble. The recently imported Egyptian

obelisk, which stood for ages on Nilus' plain, is already

falling into ruins. We can scarce decipher the deep-cut

epitaphs of the Pilgrim Fathers. The mansion of the sire is

uninhabitable for the son. The history of McKinley's

promised era of "Progress and Prosperity" will be written

by the press reporter, that busy litterateur who has neither

yesterday nor to-morrow. Some subsidized

biographer may bind McKinley up in calf, and chance

preserve a stray copy for some centuries--then good-by to

all his greatness! The mighty Washington has not been

dead a hundred years, yet has already become--as R. G.

Ingersoll informs us--"merely a steel engraving." Adams

and Hancock and Franklin are paling stars, despite our

printing-presses, have become little more than idle words in

the school-boy's lexicon. Our proud Republic, our boasted

civilization will pass, for change is the order of the universe.

What records will they leave behind? What is to prevent

them being as utterly forgotten as were Sargon's

predecessors? Here and there the delver of far years will

find the fragment of a wall, perchance an inscription carved

in stone and protected by chance from the gnawing tooth of

time. And from these posterity will construct for us a

history in which we will appear, perhaps, as the straggling

vanguard of civilization instead of heirs of all the ages.

They may dig up a petrified dude and figure out that we

were a species of anthropoid ape--learnedly proclaim us as

"the missing link!" Suppose that by some mischance a

picture of the new woman in bloomers and bestride a bike

should be preserved: Would posterity accept her as its

progenitor, or class her as a lusus naturae--perchance

an hermaphrodite? A few coins will doubtless be

discovered--if the excavators avoid the Texas treasury--and

triumphant Populism take it for granted that 'twas on these

curious disks that our "infant industry" cut its teeth. The

"In God We Trust" inscription may be regarded as a

barbaric hoodoo to prevent infantile bellyache or the evil

eye, but the dollar mark will be entirely unintelligible to a

people so many thousand years removed from the savage

superstition of metallic money. Of course woman will have

ruled the world so long that "tyrant man" will be regarded

as a sun myth, and the Goddess of Liberty on our

coins be mistaken for portraits of our female monarchs.

Thus will Cleveland and McKinley, like Hippolyta and other

amazons of old, be passed down to remote posterity in

petticoats. If the electrotype from which the New York

Journal prints its portraits of Mark Hanna should be

found among the tumuli of Manhattan Island, it were well

worth remaining alive until that time to hear the curious

speculation of craniological cranks. Should the paleologists

unearth the World building, they will find in the basement

an imperishable object about the size of a bushel-basket,

which will puzzle them not a little, but which his

contemporaries could readily inform them was the gall-bag

of Josef Phewlitzer's circulation liar. The discovery of

Editor Dana's office cat nicely embalmed may get us

accredited with the worship of felis domestica alias

cream-canner, as a "judgment" for our persistent slander of

the ancient Egyptians. But seriously, is it not a trifle

startling to reflect of how little real importance all our

feverish work and worry is, and how small a space it is

ordained to occupy in the mighty epic of mankind! Here we

have been fretting, fuming, and even fighting for months

past to "save the country," only to learn that it will in

nowise stay saved--is hastening rapidly on to the tomb of

the world's history, will pass in turn through that gloomy

sepulcher of countless nations into the great inane, the

eternal void, the all-embracing night of utter nothingness!

With all our patriotism and scannel-piping, our boasting and

our battlefields, our solemn Declarations and labored

Constitutions, we are but constructing a house of cards.

"The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,

The solemn temples, the great globe itself,

Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,

And like this insubstantial pageant faded,

Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff

As dreams are made of, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep."

We devote our energies to the propagation of a religion

which Reason, that pitiless monarch of the mind, tells us

must as inevitably pass as did those of Isis and Bel and

Cybele, leaving in the earth's all-absorbing bosom only a

few shattered altars and broken fanes. We are striving to

win and wear the immortelles, only to be told that mighty

empires have passed from the memory of mankind, and

proud kings who may have ruled the world, sunk into the

far depths of Time and been forgotten. We divide into

classes industrial and sets social and give Pride free rein to

vaunt herself, knowing that the hour will surely come when

not even a Hilprecht can distinguish between the prince's

ashes and the pauper's dust--can e'en so much as say,

"This cold dead earth, o'er which lizards crawl and from

which springs the poisonous worm and noxious weed, once

lived and loved." We busy ourselves about the style of a

coat or the cut of a corsage; we dispute anent our faiths

and plan new follies; we struggle for wealth that we may

flaunt a petty opulence in our fellows' faces and win the

envy of fools--and the span of Life but three score and ten,

while a thousand years are but as one tick of the horologe

of Time! We quarrel about our political creeds and religious

cults, as though it made any difference whether we wore

white or yellow badges, sacrificed at the shrine of Jupiter or

worshiped in the temples of Jehovah. Why so hot, little

man? Look up! Thou seest that sun? 'Tis the same that

shone on this debris when it was the throbbing metropolis

of a world. The self-same moon that looks so

peacefully down smiled on the midnight tryst in Nippur's

scented groves or Babylon's hanging gardens; the same

stars that now fret Heaven's black vault with astral fire

winked and blinked 11,000 years ago while the sandaled

feet of youth, on polished cedar floors, beat out the

rhythmic passion of its blood. There too were the Heaven

of requited love and the Hell of breaking hearts; there too

were women beauteous as the dawn and ambitious men,

grasping with eager hands at what they fondly thought the

ever-fadeless bays; there too were crowned kings and

fashion's sumptuous courts, chanting priests and tearful

penitents--the same farce tragedy of Life and Death. And

now an unsightly heap of rubbish marks this once bright

theater in which prince and pauper each played his part--

marks it, and nothing more. But the sun shines on, and the

stars, and the silver moon still draws the restless wave

around a rolling world. How small we are, how ephemeral,

how helpless in God's great hand! Is it not strange that we

do not cling, each to the others, like shipwrecked mariners

riding the stormy waters on some frail raft and looking with

dilating eyes into the black abyss?--that we waste our little

lives in wild wars and civic strife?--that all our souls are

concentrated in that one word, selfishness?--that we have

time to hate? If History be Philosophy teaching by

example, what lesson does Prof. Hilprecht bring us from the

chronicles of those kings who died 5,000 years before that

garden was planted "eastward in Eden!"

* * *

ARE WOMEN DEVOID OF DESIRE?

Perhaps a religious periodical like the ICONOCLAST

should avoid a question of such delicacy, should leave it to

the medical magazines, which may speak as plainly as they

please, even in the presence of the proverbial

"young person"--now deep in the study of physiology and

even essaying the practice of therapeutics. My quarrel,

however, is with these same medical magazines, which

delight in discovering mares' nests for no other apparent

purpose than to make mankind uncomfortable. They will

persist in disregarding the time-honored axiom that

"everybody knows more than anybody," a truism which Dr.

Spahr elaborated in his declaration that "the common

observation of common people is more trustworthy than the

statistical investigations of the most unprejudiced expert"--

even though he be a distinguished M.D. I have before me

an essay by George Troup Maxwell, M.D., of Florida, read

before the association of doctors and printed, with evident

approval, by the Virginia Medical Semi-Monthly. Like

most gentlemen of his profession, Dr. Maxwell discusses

matters of the utmost delicacy with refreshing freedom, an

example which I must follow to some extent if I would

expose his fallacies; hence the "young person"--unless

indeed she be studying to become a doctor or a writer of

"realistic" fiction--is solemnly adjured to dive no deeper

here. Dr. Maxwell makes several startling assertions from

which I--albeit a doctor of divinity instead of medicine--must

emphatically dissent. I make no apology for so doing, for it

is the time-honored prerogative of preachers to speak ex

cathedra on all questions, whether religious, scientific or

political. The pulpit is to all other professions what

philosophy is to the various schools of science--exercises

supervisory power, and by a tap here and a prod there,

makes them consentient with its own infallible scheme of

things, so to speak. It is a very trying occupation, yet some

complain that we parsons must have our summer vacation

on full pay and nurse our precious health at swell hotels,

while common people feed on potatoes--and plant

and grow six-cent cotton for the benefit of the contribution

plate. But from of old there have been morbose people

ever ready to criticize the holy and put cockleburs in the

back hair of the pure in heart. The salient features of Dr.

Maxwell's essay may be summarized; as follows:

Sexually considered, civilized man is more beastial than the

brutes. He does not respect the person of his gestant wife,

and this disregard of natural law is the most potent failure

in the curtailment of natural increase. Certain physiological

facts indicate that woman is destitute of desire. Carpenter,

the great English scientist, is quoted in support of this

proposition, and a "female lecturer of distinction" (name not

given) to establish the theory that the chief cause of marital

unhappiness and the ill health of wives is the sexual

inhumanity of husbands--such inhumanity being quite as

common among the better as among the uncultured.

The foregoing is as delicately as I can state propositions of

such far-reaching importance, and which neither Dr.

Maxwell nor the "female lecturer of distinction" treat in a

manner at all "mealy-mouthed." Even after exhausting my

stock of euphemisms the recital appears risque enough

to alarm more than one lady reader, and I am tempted to

turn back; but courage, good soul! there's nobody looking,

and if we must live it is important that we learn. "The

proper study of mankind is man;" and we can obtain no

true idea of the animal if we view him only in holiday attire.

As despite all "progress of science," incubators and other

labor-saving machinery, people still persist in entering the

world in the primogenial way, the relation of the sexes is of

quite immeasurable importance, and knowledge thereof

should not be monopolized by the narrow circle who read

medical magazines. It is well that we come

occasionally out of the cloud-realm of sentiment and

discuss the relations of man and woman from the

standpoint of practical common sense. I am aware that the

views expressed by Dr. Maxwell are entertained by some

very able medical men; but they violate the public

understanding, and, as usual, the people are right and the

specialists are wrong. We do not find desire, as here

understood, in plants and the lowest development of animal

life, it being particularly an attribute of the higher biogeny.

As the more perfect the animal organism the more acute

the sensations of pleasure and pain, it follows that in man,

most complex of earthly creatures, is found the most

powerful procreative passion. But while this is the

necessary correlative of his superior nervo-muscular

organization, his better attributes are likewise developed--or

differentiated--by the same law of evolution. Desire, though

accentuated, is refined and rendered subordinate to his

reason, while the brute is the blind slave of instinct. With

the desire of the man and the reason of the mollusk, the

genus homo would be all that he is painted by Dr.

Maxwell. Should man become for one day "more beastial

than the brute" his boasted civilization would revert to

subter-savagery. Under such conditions human progress,

society itself, were impossible. It is by no means true, as

Dr. Maxwell asserts, that children are born solely because

men are animals possessing animalistic instincts. True,

they could not well be born were men not animals; but the

"sweet reasonableness" of things enters ever more and

more into the advent of children upon this earth. Were man

made altogether of mud, intent only on the indulgence of

brute desire, there had been no sacred institution of

marriage, and family names proudly handed down from sire

to son through many centuries. The name of father had not

been venerable, nor that of mother a synonym of

sanctity. To the civilized man marriage does not mean, as

Dr. Maxwell seems to imagine, simply license for obscene

riot, but a solemn covenant that he and the object of his

adoration have forsaken all else to cleave each unto the

other through weal and through woe, through life unto

death. Desire may be the basic principle of the union, but

only as the earth is the basic principle of the rose's beauty

and the jasmine's perfume. Since earliest biblical days

women have sought to bear children that their husbands

might love them better; indicating that indulgence is not

man's sole concern, even though he be a barbarian; that

one reason he seeks the opposite sex is his desire for fair

daughters and brave sons--a love in which there is no taint

of lust. Hugo, to whom the human heart was as a printed

page, has given us an admirable portrait of "the way of a

man with a maid" in the courtship of Marius and Cosette.

Youth and ardor and opportunity, yet no thought of evil--all

the dross in human nature transformed into the spirituelle

by the pure white light of love. True, all men are not

Mariuses or Romeos. There be Lovelaces and Cagliostros

and Calibans; but prithee, good sir, let us judge our kind by

the nobler instead of the baser standards. Josephs and St.

Anthonys are not plentiful I grant you; but neither are such

brutish husbands as those you denounce. Love and poetry

and chivalry still have an abiding-place in the heart of man,

and the mother and matriarch of this triune is woman. Prof.

Carpenter, Dr. Maxwell and the "female lecturer of

distinction" to the contrary notwithstanding, it is doubtful if

the sexes differ much in the intensity of desire. True, I

have written somewhere that "God made the male to seek,

the female to be sought"; but it does not follow therefore

that every woman is a Daphne who would be transformed

into a laurel tree to escape an importunate lover. There

may have been women so bloodless that their love

left frost on the window-panes of their boudoirs; but never

did their sons become world compellers. Despite the pretty

theory of Dr. Maxwell, the same fiery cross is laid upon the

daughters as upon the sons of men, and thousands falter

and fall beneath it and are swept downwards to their doom.

Were it otherwise, were women the passionless creatures

some doctors delight to paint them, all our encomiums of

female virtue were idle mockery. It is because we realize

that in the veins of the vestal virgin runs the same fierce

tide which Egypt's Queen nor Russia's Empress could

control, and which flamed in battle-splendor in the ten

years' war of Troy, that with uncovered heads we render

her the tribute of our respect. Women admit all this in

demanding the "single standard of morals." It is doubtless

true that many women are less amorous than their lords--

are to some extent the victims of the latter; but before

assuming that this defect is congenital it were well to

inquire if there be not an efficient post-natal cause. It is no

compliment to woman to urge that she contributes

unwillingly to the world, would fain ignore the God-given law

to "be fruitful and multiply." Regardless of the affected

horror of anaemic prudes and ancient wall-flowers, the

woman of to-day insists upon being recognized as a vital

force--is even beginning to comprehend that, refine it as

you will, differentiate it as you may, it is the same vital force

which fills the cradle that sways the scepter. As she

aspires to share with man the regency of this world, she will

scarce thank Carpenter and Maxwell for a premise from

which the conclusion must be inevitably drawn that, as a

world-power, she must ever rank with eunuchs--that she is

here solely by man's volition and despite her implied

protest. We must understand woman before presuming to

measure her passions or estimate her powers; and it is well

to remember that after some sixty centuries of

interested scrutiny she remains very much a mystery--to

eminent physicians as well as others. Her mind seems to

bewilder the psychologists no less than her body puzzles

the physiologists--both find the factual impossible and the

self-evident absurd. Dr. Maxwell has discovered, however,

that comparatively few women marry men whom they would

select were they free to inspect the entire human penfold

and make a choice of a mate. Now if he will conjoin that

fact to this other, equally self-evident, that with the average

woman desire is the fruitage of which love is the flower,

perchance he will find a valid explanation of what Carpenter

calls her sexual passivity. Man is a born polygamist, but

woman is not naturally polyandrous. This statement--which

I have made hitherto to the consternation of the godly and

at imminent danger of being prosecuted for heresy--is

substantiated by the fact that with man desire usually

precedes love, while the latter is not its necessary

sequence; but with the normal woman love must act as

pilot for passion--so much is she our moral superior. Every

woman is a day-dreamer and a worshiper. During girlhood

she pictures to herself some perfect man--some impossible

demigod--who is to drift within the little circle of her life and

make her the proudest of women, the happiest of wives. In

grace or beauty, in genius or bravery--or all these

attributes--he is to be the paragon, to tower like Saul above

his brethren. Her husband is to be a man of whom she will

be intensely proud, herself the envy of her sex. If this be

not correct let some old mother in Israel answer. Happy for

the daydreamer if her fairy prince, or somewhat her fond

imaginings can accept as such, lays heart and fortune at

her feet; sorrowful indeed if he come not, worse if he

materialize and have eyes only for others. If she be so

fortunate as to wed the one man in all the world

whom she would have chosen had such choice been

vouchsafed her by kind Heaven, o'ermastering love will

sweep her through all the heavens a sensuous fancy ever

feigned; but the chances are that her idol lives only in the

ghostly realm of dreams, else goes elsewhere to wive, and

she marries not whom she would but whom she must--

wedlock, thanks to her mistaken training, being the end and

aim of her existence. Instead of an idol to adore, she

secures some foolish eidolon whom she can scarce

respect, and through days of disgust and nights of agony

strives to "do her duty," to conceal from the world her

disappointment. Thus is blood that might have been a

sirocco to stir the soul of an anchorite, transformed into an

icy mist--the Paphian Venus lies crushed, degraded, cold,

amid the reeds of Pan. But this mesalliance, this mating

with Davus the detested instead of with Oedipus the

adored, is not the only cause of indifference. The health of

American wives, their muliebrity or womanly power, is

sapped in various ways. Millions of them are overworked,

all the virility ground out of them in the brutal treadmill of

existence; and it not infrequently happens that they are the

wives of men in easy circumstances, who are too fat-

headed to realize that those womanly attributes which so

charm the sterner sex cannot long withstand continual

drudgery. One is tempted to believe that such men married

to save the expense of hiring a housekeeper, that they

hoped by sleeping with their laundress to avoid wash bills.

Take the great middle class of America (which is the social

and moral cream of the country) and you will find that, as a

rule, the men have abundant leisure in which to recuperate

from the exhaustion of labor, and are robust as Jove's

Phoenician bull, while their wives slave from early morn till

dewy eve and present the faded, "washed-out" appearance

that bespeaks the work which is never done and the

worry which ends only with death. If you will look closely

you will detect traces of tight corsets and other sartorial

enginery with which Dame Fashion attempts to eliminate

the little life which continual cooking, washing and pot-

walloping has left--for woman, though her heart be broken,

her spirit crushed and her viscera a chaos, still clings to her

vanity, will "follow the fashions" though they lead to a

funeral. Such is your Idalian Aphrodite ten years after

marriage, when to her matured charms the beauty of her

girlhood should be as moonlight unto sunlight and as water

unto wine. And this wan, suffering creature, with a drug-

shop on her pantry shelves and more "female complaints"

than were known to the father of medicine, is expected to

comfort the couch of Caesar! Nor is this all. As the

struggle for existence grows harder (as it has been doing in

America for some decades) and the necessity for "keeping

up appearances" more imperative, ever greater precautions

are taken to prevent family increase. So widespread is this

evil that you can scarce pick up a paper without finding

some abortion nostrum advertised. Scan the next paper

that comes into your home and see if the virtues of some

tansy, penny-royal or other foeticidal compound be not

therein set forth. Were these crime promoters not

extensively sold the murderous scoundrels who

manufacture them could not annually expend vast sums of

money without "public educators" for their exploitation.

These advertisements frequently suggest the crime; that is

their intent; hence publishers who insert them are the co-

partners of abortionists and share both the iniquity and the

cash. But even this costly advertising does not indicate the

extent of the evil, for by far the greater part of those

married women who desire to avoid maternity are their own

practitioners--paying the penalty with premature age,

impotency and pain. As a rule the mother of a large family

is a healthy woman with vigor unimpaired, while others of

her age having few children or none are the semi-invalids

who denounce their husbands to the doctor. The practice

of avoiding marital responsibility is frequently condemned

by the medical press, even by the pulpit; but while M.D.'s

and D.D.'s make a specialty of both gynecology and

gyneolatry, neither seem to understand the spirit in which

these sins against hygienics are committed. Doubtless a

few fashionable butterflies avoid motherhood for selfish

reasons; but these are unimportant exceptions to the rule.

If a woman does not love her husband she may not care to

bear him children; but maternal instinct usually dominates

this desire. If she does love him, and his financial

resources be limited, she hesitates to increase his

responsibilities. The social standing of a family in this

artificial age is measured chiefly by the faithfulness with

which it follows fashion's decrees; and as every child, by

enhancing expense makes service of this modern Moloch

more difficult, the unborn innocents are slain. She

considers the educational and other advantages that will

accrue to the children already born, and unselfishly--if

sinfully--sacrifices herself. It is an evil that will scarce be

eliminated by the dehortations of homilists who see no

deeper than the surface. Dr. Maxwell and his lady lecturer

are certainly mistaken in the assumption that American

husbands do not consider the welfare of their wives when in

a delicate condition, and it is a mistake that must be

classed either as criminal negligence or calumny. I opine

that the lady lecturer aforesaid is a sour old maid--that if

she ever becomes a wife and mother she will learn

somewhat of the caprices of her sex subsequent to

conception that will materially modify her complaint.

Reasoning by analogy from the inferior order of animals to

man hagled more than one enthusiastic physiologist

into serious error. The medical profession is continually

alarming the country. It has been but a little while since

men were assured that they were poisoning their babies by

kissing them, and now they are flatly told that their wives

regard the nuptial couch with aversion. Havana cigars give

a fellow the "tobacco heart," plug exhausts the saliva

necessary to digestion, and bourbon whiskey burns his

stomach full of blowholes. Beer makes him bilious, tea and

coffee knock out his nerves, while plum-pudding gives him

dyspepsia, grape pie appendicitis and hot biscuits

undermine his general health. Emotional preaching afflicts

him with "jerks," golf has a tendency to paresis, the round

dance infects him with philogyny and bicycling deforms his

face. We might just as well be dead and with Lucifer as

believe these doctors, for life wouldn't be half worth the

living if we heeded their laws. My brethren of the loaded

capsule and sociable stethoscope are evidently off their

equipoise. Babies flourish much better on the kiss

micrococcus than on the slipper bacillus, few women will

live with impotent husbands, and nearly every centenarian

is a collocation of bad habits that, by all the laws of

Hippocrates, should have buried him at the halfway house.

It may seem unchivalrous to say so, but it is a stubborn fact

nevertheless, and merits the consideration of Dr. Maxwell,

that more men are misled by lustful women than maids

betrayed by designing men. In fact, no man--at least no

civilized man--makes improper advances to a woman

unless he receives some encouragement, being deterred

both by chivalrous sentiment and respect for the persuasive

shotgun. Despite the picture drawn by the lady lecturer and

others of the horrors of married life, I opine that the woman

who captures a sure-enough man who isn't negotiating

simply for a cook and chambermaid, and who can be

depended upon to play Romeo to her Juliet for sixty

years or so, should be in no unseemly haste to break into

that heaven where Hymen is given the marble heart, and

the matron who breaks into the game with seven obedient

husbands to her credit has no advantage over the old maid

who never swallowed a pillow while watching a man clad

only in a single garment and a cerulean halo of profanity,

making frantic swipes under the bureau for a missing collar-

button.

* * *

HYPNOTIC POWER OF HER.

I have received a letter from Tyler, Texas, propounding

the following fateful conundrum: "Can Woman Hypnotize

Man?" My correspondent adds that "by answering, the

ICONOCLAST will confer a favor on the people of Tyler,

decide a bet and settle a vexatious question."

The affirmative scoops the stakes--wins dead easy, and

world without end. The man who puts his doubloons on the

negative either never saw a woman until after she was

dead, or didn't know what ailed him when under her

hypnotic influence. Perhaps he imagined that he had a

chronic case of yellow jaundice, was threatened with

paresis or had been inadvertently struck by lightning.

Perhaps he's under the mystic spell of some "wily Vivien"

even now, and laying foolish wagers in his mesmeric sleep.

"Can woman hypnotize man? "Well, I should snigger.

She can hypnotize anything that wears pants, from the

prince at his gilded poker game, to the peasant scattering

worm poison in the lowly cotton patch and revolving in his

think tank the tenets of Populism; and I'm not sure but the

clothing store dummies and their brother dudes are simply

the physical wrecks and mental ruins of her hypnotic

medicine. She hypnotizes because she can't help it.

She's built that way. The Tyler savants are 'way behind the

times. They are plunging into the shoreless realm of

psychology in search of information that was trite in

antediluvian times. They are trying to determine whether

man is a free moral agent in matters matrimonial, when the

sire of Solomon had made answer, and Lillian Russell's

multitudinous husbands settled the "vexatious question"

forever and for aye. But perhaps Tyler has been too busy

raising politicians to keep pace with the psychological

procession. Eve hypnotized Adam and made him cast

away the empire of the earth for a scrubby apple, and ever

since her fair daughters have been making men imitate

their remote forefather's folly.

Woman does not "operate" as do the professional he-

hypnotists. Instead of giving you a bright button or brand-

new dime to look at, she puts her dimples in evidence--

maelstroms of love in a sea of beauty. She dazzles you for

a moment with the dreamy splendor of her eyes, then

studies the toe of a boot that would raise a Kansas corn-

crop for Trilby or supply Cinderella with bunions. She looks

down to blush and she looks up to sigh--catches you "a-

comin' an' goin' "--and you're gone! You realize that the

linchpin is slipping out of your logic, but you let 'er slip.

You suspect that your judgment has taken unto itself wings,

and that you couldn't tell whether you're a red-licker

Democrat or a hard-cider Prohibitionist; but you don't care.

You simply bid farewell to every fear and give the

"operator" your undivided attention. She plays with a

skilled hand on all your senses, until the last one of them

"passes in music out of sight" and leaves you a mental

bankrupt. She makes you drunken with the music of her

voice and maddens you with the low, sweet melody of her

skirts. She permits you, quite accidentally, of course,

to catch a glimpse of an ankle turned for an angel, and, as

she bends forward to chastise you with her fan, your

vagrant gaze rests for a fleeting moment on alabaster

hemispheres rising in a billowy sea of lace, like Aphrodite

cradled in old ocean's foam. You are now far advanced in

the hypnotic trance, and very fond of it as far as you've got.

Her every posture is a living picture, her slightest

movement a sensuous symphony, her breath upon your

cheek a perfumed air to waft you to the dreamy but

dangerous land of the lotus-eaters. You drift nearer, and

ever nearer, like a moth revolving in narrowing circles

around an incandescent light, until you find yourself alone

with her in some cozy nook, the world forgetting if not by

your creditors forgot. Being naturally industrious, you seek

employment, and she gives you her hand to hold. Of

course, she could hold it herself, but the occupation

pleases you, and she doesn't mind. Besides, you make

more rapid progress into the realm of irresponsibility by

taking care of it for her occasionally. You conceive that

what is worth doing at all is worth doing well, and freeze to

that little fragment of pulsing snow like a farmer to his

Waterbury in a camp-meeting crowd. She rewards your

devotion to duty by a gentle pressure, and a magnetic thrill

starts at your finger tips and goes through your system like

an applejack toddy, until it makes your toes tingle, then

starts on its return trip, gathering volume as it travels, until

it becomes a tidal wave that envelops all your world. You

are now uncertain whether you have hit the lottery for the

capital prize or been nominated for justice of the peace.

You have lost your identity, and should you chance to meet

yourself in the middle of the road would need an

introduction. The larger the supply of brains you sat into

the game with, the less you have left. You begin to talk

incoherently, and lay the premise for a breach of

promise case. You sip the hand-made nectar from the rosy

slot in her face, harrow the Parisian peach bloom on her

cheek with your scrubbing-brush mustache, reduce the

circumference of her health-corset with your manly arm,

and your hypnotism is complete. Right there the last faint

adumbration of responsibility ends and complete mental

aberration begins. You sigh like a furnace and write

sonnets to your mistress' eyebrow--you cut fantastic capers

before high Heaven for the divertisement of those who don't

yet know how it is themselves. The "operator" may break

the spell by marrying you, in which case you will return by

easy stages to the normal and again become a sane man

and useful member of society; but if she lets you down with

the "sister" racket, your nervous system is pretty apt to

sour. When a woman loses her hypnotic power she either

straddles a bike, becomes a religious crank or seeks

surcease for her sorrow among the female suffragists.

* * *

VICTOR HUGO'S IMMORTALITY.

Philadelphia's school board has barred Victor Hugo's

"Les Miserables" from the list of books to be used in the

high school in the teaching of French, as a book not fit for

girls. What would not one give for a diagram of the heads

of these educators? It must be a nasty mind which can find

anything immoral in that book as a whole. One may take a

chapter out here and there, and show it to be broad and

coarse, divorced from the context, but the whole effect of

the book is moral. The mind of the man who can say that

"Les Miserables" will not tend as a whole to make a girl

more womanly, a boy more manly, must be poisoned by

the miasma from a filthy heart. What and who in it

are immoral? Not Valjean! Not Fantine even, nor Cosette!

Not Marius! Not Javert, the detective! Is the chapter on

Cambronne's surrender the offending fragment of the great

literary masterpiece? That chapter is the sublimity of

disgust! There never was anyone hurt spiritually or morally

by the great French masterpiece of fiction. The man who

can say the book is defiling, would draw defilement from

the fount of Castaly. The Philadelphia school board has

declared itself an aggregation of asses. "Les Miserables"

is the greatest poem of divine humanity that this world has

known since Shakespeare wrote "Lear." But I suppose

"Lear," too, is immoral. I suppose everything is immoral,

from "Oedipus, the Tyrant," to Hall Caine's "Christian,"

that teaches that men are born of woman, and that love will

have its way, even unto all bitterness. It is eminently fitting

that "Les Miserables" should be condemned as immoral in

the most immoral city in the United States. A Philadelphian

may be depended upon to see immorality in one of

Raphael's Madonnas.--St. Louis Mirror.

My esteemed contemporary should bottle up its indignation,

there is absolutely nothing to be gained by lambasting

idiots, by criticizing cretins. Editor Reedy is but casting his

pearls before swine--is talking to people who, having eyes

see not, having ears hear not, and whose cerebra are filled

with sawdust. They are like unto a lot of sheep that follow

the master ram, not because they comprehend or care

whither he is going, but because they smell him, and point

their proboscidi in his direction as naturally as the needle

lines the pole. It was Jean Paul--was it not?--who

discovered that if a cane be held horizontally before the

lead ram of a flock, compelling him to saltate, then

removed, the thousandth ewe lamb will jump at that point

just as did the pioneer. So it is with a pietistical and

puristical people--they will follow some stupid old

bellwether because utterly incapable of independent

thought, of individual ratiocination. When "Les Miserables"

first appeared some literary Columbus made the

remarkable discovery that it was a French book, that it was

shot full of "slang," the expressive patois of the race,

that it was liberally spiced with argot, the vernacular of

vagabonds. Hugo's immortal masterpiece has not yet

recovered from this discovery--the thousandth ewe lamb is

still blithely saltating over the blackthorn. It is as useless

to contend against the purist fad as against the holiness fake.

Like a plague of army worms or epidemic of epizootic, it

must run its course. Preternicety of expression, an

affectation of euphemism, has in every age and clime

evidenced moral degeneration and mental decay. When

people emasculate their minds, they redouble their

corporeal devotion at the shrine of Priapus, for nature

preserves the equipoise. Every writer of virility is now

voted obscene, every man who strikes sledge-hammer

blows at brutal wrong intrenched in prescriptive right is

denounced as immoral. "Les Miserables" not fit for young

ladies' reading!--and this the epocha of the New Woman, of

the single standard of mind and morals. While woman is

insisting that she is every way man's equal, entitled to

share with him the wardship of this world, Detroit is putting

bloomers on the statues of Dian, Boston refusing the

Bacchante, Waco draping the marble figure of a child

exhibited at her cotton palace, Anthony Comstock having

cataleptic convulsions, "Les Miserables" excluded from

Philadelphia high schools and the ICONOCLAST

denounced by certain bewhiskered old he-virgins as

obscene! And so it goes. This world is becoming so

awfully nice that it's infernally nawsty. It sees evil in

everything because its point of view is that of the pimp. Its

mind is a foul sewer whose exhalations coat even the

Rose of Sharon with slime. A writer may no longer call a

spade a spade; he must cautiously refer to it as an

agricultural implement lest he shock the supersensitiveness

of hedonists and call down upon his head the Anathema

Maranatha of men infinitely worse than Oscar Wilde. What

the Mirror means by "Cambronne's surrender" I cannot

imagine, unless Editor Reedy was indulging in grim irony. I

present extracts from the account of Cambronne, which he

suspects may have given the pietistical Quakers a pain. It

is the finale of Hugo's matchless word-painting of the Battle

of Waterloo:

"A few squares of the guard, standing motionless in the

swash of the rout, like rocks in running water, held out till

night. They awaited the double shadow of night and death,

and let them surround them. Each regiment, isolated from

the others, and no longer connected with the army, which

was broken on all sides, died where it stood. The gloomy

squares, deserted, conquered and terrible, struggled

formidably with death, for Ulm, Wagram, Jena and

Friedland were dying in it. When twilight set in at nine in

the evening, one square still remained at the foot of the

plateau of Mont St. Jean. In this mournful valley, at the

foot of the slope scaled by the cuirassiers, now inundated

by the English masses, beneath the converging fire of the

hostile and victorious artillery, under a fearful hailstorm of

projectiles, this square still resisted. It was commanded by

an obscure officer by the name of Cambronne. At each

volley the square still diminished, but continued to reply to

the canister with musketry fire, and each moment

contracted its four walls. Fugitives in the distance, stopping

at moments to draw breath, listened in the darkness to this

gloomy diminishing thunder. When this legion had become

only a handful, when their colors were but a rag,

when their ammunition was exhausted, and muskets were

clubbed, and when the pile of corpses was greater than the

living group, the victors felt a species of sacred awe, and

the English artillery ceased firing. It was a sort of respite;

these combatants had around them an army of specters,

outlines of mounted men, the black profile of guns, and the

white sky visible through the wheels; the colossal death's

head which heroes ever glimpse in the smoke of battle,

advanced and looked at them. They could hear in the

twilight gloom that the guns were being loaded; the lighted

matches, resembling the eyes of a tiger in the night, formed

a circle round their heads. The linstocks of the English

batteries approached the guns, and at this moment an

English general, Colville according to some, Maitland

according to others, holding the supreme moment

suspended over the heads of these men, shouted to them,

'Brave Frenchmen, surrender!' Cambronne answered,

'Merde.' To Cambronne's exclamation, an English voice

replied, 'Fire!' The batteries flashed, the hillside trembled,

from all these throats of brass came a last eruption of

grape, a vast cloud of smoke vaguely whitened by the

rising moon rolled up, and when the smoke had been

dissipated, there was nothing. The dreaded remnant was

annihilated, the guard was dead. The four walls of the

living redoubt lay low, with here and there a scarcely

perceptible quiver among the corpses. Thus the French

legions, grander than those of Rome, expired on Mont St.

Jean, on the earth sodden with rain and blood."

Hugo quite needlessly apologized for quoting the

Frenchman's laconic reply to the summons to surrender.

He was writing history, and no milk-and-water euphemism

could have expressed Cambronne's defiance and contempt.

Of course John Bull pitilessly shot to death that heroic

fragment of the Old Guard, which forgot in its supreme

hour that while foolhardiness may be magnificent, it

is not war. I would have put a cordon of soldiers about that

pathetic remnant of Napoleon's greatness and held it there

to this good day rather than have plowed it down as a

farmer plows jimson weeds into a pile of compost; but John

Bull is not built that way--is impregnated with the chivalry of

Baylor. Cambronne's reply is the only objectionable word in

the entire work, and certain it might be pardoned in a scrap

of history by people whose press and pulpit have

apotheosized "Trilby," Du Maurier's supposititious

prostitute. I presume that the Philadelphia school board is

about on an intellectual and moral parity with the trustees of

Baylor--haven't the remotest idea whether merde means

maggots or moonshine. Victor Hugo was a lord in the

aristocracy of intellect; his masterpiece is nature's faithful

mirror. Ame de boue should be branded with a hot iron

on the hickory-nut head of every creature whom its perusal

does not benefit. His description of the Battle of Waterloo

is to "Ben-Hur's" chariot race what Mount Aetna in

eruption is to a glow worm. It transcends the loftiest flights

of Shakespeare. Before it even "The Wondrous Tales of

Troy" pales its ineffectual fires. It casts the shadow of its

genius upon Bulwer's "Pompeii" as the wing of the condor

shades the crow. Byron's "sound of revelry by night" is the

throbbing of a snare drum drowned in Hugo's thunders of

Mont St. Jean. Danton's rage sinks to an inaudible

whisper, and even Aeschylus shrivels before that

cataclysm of Promethean fire; that celestial monsoon. It

stirs the heart like the rustle of a silken gonfalon dipped in

gore, like the whistle of rifle-balls, like the rhythmic

dissonance of a battery slinging shrapnel from the heights

of Gettysburg into the ragged legions of General Lee. I

have counseled my contemporary to be calm; but by

Heaven! it does stir my soul into mutiny to see a lot

of intellectual pismires, who have secured positions of trust

because of their political pull in the Tenderloin, hurling their

petty scorn at Victor Hugo. It were like Carlyle's "critic fly"

complacently rubbing its hinder legs and giving its opinion

of the Parthenon, like aesop's vindictive snail besliming

the masterpiece of Phidias, like a Baylor professor lecturing

on the poetry of Lord Byron. Every writer of eminence

since the days of Moses has had to run the gauntlet of

these slight people's impotent wrath. While slandering the

prophets of progress and religion they have vented their

foul rheum on all the gods of literature. Kansas, I am told,

put a man in the penitentiary for sending through the mails

biblical texts printed on postal cards. Speaking of Goethe's

"Wilhelm Meister," Carlyle says:

" 'Meister,' it appears is a vulgar work; no gentleman, we

hear in certain circles, could have written it; few real

gentlemen, it is insinuated, can like to read it; no real lady,

unless possessed of considerable courage should profess

having read it at all!"

And yet "Wilhelm Meister" changed the whole current of

European literature--the work was practically committed to

memory by the noblest men and women of the world. We

hear the venerated Queen of Prussia repeating from it in

her cruel exile,

"Wer nie sein Brod mit Thranen ass,

Wer nicht die Kummervollen Nachte

Auf Seinem Bette weinend sass,

Der Kennt euch nicht, ihr himmlischen Machte."

Let the Philadelphia school board and the Baylorian

managers construe it if they can.

"Udi vura udorini udiri cicova cilti mora

Udorini talti hollna u ede caimoni mora"

What? I guess "nit." The idea of keeping "Les

Miserables" away from the ladies!--just as though there

could be found in the whole country a sixteen-year-old maid

with any pretensions to intelligence who hasn't wept over

little Cosette, been in love with Enjolras and "doted on"

Gavroche and Jean Valjean! So ultra nice has the world

become that we must skip the Canticles. Shakespeare's

plays must now be clapper-clawed to make them palatable.

Alexander Pope's philosophic rhyme must be deleted with

dashes. Walt Whitman's poetry is too strong for the

average stomach. But we continue to fire into the bosoms

of our families the daily press with its specialization of

Hogan's Alley and the Yellow Kid, reeking with its burden of

ads. of abortion recipes and syphilitic nostrums--even take

our wives and daughters to the Tabernacle to be told by

Sam Jones that if they don't think he has backbone he'll

"pull up his shirt-tail and show 'em!" Byron was vigorously

denounced by the vindictive Miss Nancys of his day, but

scornfully replied:

"I have not loved the world, nor the world me;

I have not flatter'd its rank breath nor bow'd

To its idolatries a patient knee."

There seems to be nothing left that we may safely read

except Watts' Hymns, Talmage's sermons and the pathetic

story of Mary's Little Lamb--a promising diet truly, upon

which to rear intellectual titans. The remarkable thing about

this purist fad is that all the Podsnaps wear pants--the

ladies are not on tenter-hooks all the time lest something

be said or written that will "bring a blush to the cheek of a

young person." It is the he-virgins, the bearded women

who are ever on the watch lest young femininity become

impregnated with an idea. This country's got a bad

case of malus pudor--and needs an heroic dose of

double-action liver pills.

* * *

THE SCIENCE OF KISSING.

I note that a Britisher named Prof. Bridger has been

infringing my copyright by proclaiming, as an original

discovery, that kissing is an excellent tonic and will cure

dyspepsia. When the o'erbusy bacteriologists first

announced that osculation was a dangerous pastime, that

divers and sundry varieties of bacteria hopped blithely back

and forth engendering disease and death, I undertook a

series of experiments solely in the interest of science.

Being a Baptist Preacher and making camp-meetings my

specialty, I had unusual opportunity for investigation, for

those of our faith are strict constructionists of the biblical

law to "greet one another with a kiss." I succeeded in

demonstrating before the end of the tenting season that

osculation, when practiced with reasonable discretion and

unfaltering industry, is an infallible antidote for at least half

the ills that human flesh is heir to. The reason the doctors

arrived at different conclusions is that they kissed

indiscriminately and reasoned inductively. They found on

casting up the account that bad breath and face powder,

the sour milk-bottle of youth and the chilling frost of age,

comprised six-sevenths of the sum total. Under such

conditions there was nothing to do but establish a

quarantine. I pointed out, as Prof. Bridger has since done,

that a health microbe as well as a disease bacillus

nidificates on the osculatory apparatus, and added that

failure to absorb a sufficient quantity of these hygiologic

germs into the system causes old maids to look jaundiced

and bachelors to die sooner than benedicts. Kisses, when

selected with due care and taken on the installment

plan, will not only restore a misplaced appetite, but are

especially beneficial in cases of hay fever, as they banish

that tired feeling, tone up the liver, invigorate the heart, and

make the blood to sing through the system like a giant

jewsharp. I found by patient experiment that the health

microbe becomes active at fifteen, reaches maturity at

twenty, begins to lose its vigor at forty, and is quite useless

as a tonic when, as someone has tersely expressed it, a

woman's kisses begin to "taste of her teeth." Thin bluish

lips produce very few health germs, and those scarce worth

the harvesting; but a full red mouth with Cupid curves at the

corners, will yield enormously if the crop be properly

cultivated. I did not discover whether the blonde or

brunette variety is entitled to precedence in medical

science, but incline to the opinion that a judicious admixture

is most advisable from a therapeutical standpoint. Great

care should be taken when collecting the germs not to

crush them by violent collision or blow them away with a

loud explosion that sounds like hitting an empty sugar

hogshead with a green hide. The practice still prevailing in

many parts of this country of chasing a young woman ever

the furniture and around the barn like an amateur cowboy

trying to rope a maverick, rounding her up in the presence

of a dozen people, unscrewing her neck and planting

almost any place a kiss that sounds like a muley cow

pulling her hind foot out of a black-waxy mud hole, and

which jars the putty off the window panes, possesses no

more curative powers than hitting a flitch of bacon with the

back of your hand. I prithee, avoid it; when a girl runs from

a kiss you may take it for granted either that the germ crop

is not ripe or you are poaching on somebody else's

preserves. The best results can be obtained about the

midnight hour, when the dew is on the rose, the

jasmine bud drunken with its own perfume and the mock-

bird trilling a last good night to his drowsy mate. You

entice your best girl into the garden to watch Venus' flaming

orb hanging like the Kohinoor pendant from the crescent

moon. You pause beneath the great gnarled live oak, its

myriad leaves rustling softly as the wings of seraphs. Don't

be in a hurry, and for God's sake, don't gab--in such a night

silence is the acme of eloquence. "In such a night Troilus

mounted the Trojan walls and sighed his soul toward the

Grecian tents where Cressid lay." She watches the fireflies

respiring in phosphorescent flame amid the clover blooms,

while you watch her and twine a spray of honeysuckle in

her hair. Your clumsy fingers unloose the guards and her

fragrant tresses, caught up by the cool night wind, float

about your face. Somehow her hand gets tangled up with

yours, and after a spasmodic flutter there remains a willing

prisoner. The fireflies have failed to interest her and she is

studying the stars. You move your shoulder forward to give

her head a rest and get hold of her other hand. Be patient;

when she wants you to kiss her she'll find means to make it

manifest, and a maid worth kissing despises a forward

man. She looks very beautiful with her face upturned in the

moonlight; but don't say a word about it, for there's a little

of the poseur about all the daughters of Eve. She

withdraws her eyes from the stars, slowly turns them

dreamily upon yours, and you note that they are filled with

astral fire. They roam idly over the shadowy garden, then

close as beneath a weight of weariness. Her head rests

more heavily against your shoulder and her bosom

trembles with a half-audible sigh. There is now really no

occasion for further delay. Do not swoop down upon the

health germs like a hungry hen-hawk on a green gosling,

but incline your head gently until your carefully deodorized

breath is upon her lips--there pause, for the essence

of enjoyment is in anticipation. The man who gulps down a

glass of old wine without first inhaling its oenanthic and

feasting his eyes upon its ruddy splendors, is simply a sot.

Wait until you have noted the dark lashes lying upon the

cheek of sun-flushed snow, "the charm of married brows,"

the throat of alabaster, the dimple in her chin, the wine-tint

of her half-parted lips with their glint of pearl--wait until her

eyes half-open, look inquiringly into yours, and close again,

then cincture her gently but firmly with one arm, support her

chin with the other hand, and give the health germs ample

time to change their home. A kiss to have any scientific

value, should last one minute and seven seconds by

Shrewsbury clock, and be repeated seven times, not in

swift succession, but with the usual interval between wine

at a symposiac. Byron did these things differently, but the

author of "Don Juan" is not a safe example for young folks

to follow. He pictures Mars lying with his head in the lap of

Venus,

"Feeding on thy sweet cheek, while thy lips are

With lava-kisses melting while they burn,

Shower'd on his eyelids, brow and mouth as from an urn."

That may be eminently satisfactory to Mars, but scarce

proper for Venus. It is exciting, but not scientific. It

suggests charity children gorging themselves with plum-

pudding, rather than poetic natures drunken with beauty;

and fragrance, swooning 'neath the sweetness of a duet

sung by their own chaste souls. The dyspeptic who cannot

recover by following my prescription deserves to die. The

pessimist whom it doesn't make look at life through rose-

tinted glasses, should be excluded from human society.

The hypochondriac whom it doesn't help ought to be

hanged. There is not a human ill--unless it be hypocrisy--

for which nature does not provide a remedy, and I

recommend the health germ which builds its nest on

lovely woman's lips as worth more than the whole materia

medica. I don't know whether it will raise the dead, but I've

always doubted the story that Egypt kissed the cold lips of

her Roman Antony--have suspected it would have brought

me back to life and love had I been dead a month. The

unscientific catch-as-catch-can kiss has no more beneficial

effect than slapping yourself in the face with a raw beef-

steak. It is but a slight improvement on the civilization of

Ashantee, where a man proposes marriage by knocking his

Dulcina down with a club and dragging her through the

backwoods' pasture by the hair of her head; but kisses

properly taken--beneath the stars and among the roses--are

the perennial fount of youth for which Ponce de Leon sailed

far seas in a vain search for the blessed Bimini.

* * *

THE NEW SOUTH.

One of the cardinal faults of the American character is a

propensity to brag. Brother Jonathan's egotism long since

passed into a proverb. In no section of this land of the

alleged free and home of the ism does the blowhard blow

longer and louder than in the South. We are the people,

the nonpareil; there are none like us beneath the sun!

From the empyrean we look down upon common humanity,

talk turgid and swell up with the vain glory of a young

turkey-cock with his first tail feathers! It were well for us to

cease our foolish boasting and con well the stern lessons

taught at the cannon's mouth. The first and greatest of

these is that only by honest labor, by earnest endeavor,

can a people become truly great. The war swept away the

curse that was our weakness, negro slavery. It broke in

upon our old exclusiveness, shattered the foolish

caste that held us in iron thrall, made labor respectable and

progress possible. It brought energetic Northern people

among us to teach us that the way to greatness lies

through the workshop,--to incite us to shake of our

indolence and enter the race for preferment. Grant's red-

throated batteries did more than break the shackles from

the wrists of the blacks; they tore the cursed fetters of caste

and custom from the minds of the whites,--a nobler

emancipation. They set the heart of southern chivalry to

beating with a truer, a stronger life. In the mad tempest of

battle the New South was born; the crash of arms was the

groans of maternity, the deluge of blood her baptismal rite.

From the ashes of desolate homes and ruined cities she

sprang phoenix-like, and is now mounting the empyrean

with strong and steady wing. The emancipation

proclamation was a bow of promise that never again while

the world stands and the heavens endure will North and

South meet in battle shock; that the greatness of the one

shall become the proud heritage of the other; that the

grandest section of the American Union shall yet, with

God's blessing, produce the greatest people that ever

adorned the earth.

The war is long past. We fought and lost. Our triumphant

foe extended to us a brother's hand, accorded us the honor

due a brave and spirited people. That we should suffer

reconstruction pains was to have been expected. That they

were unnecessarily severe was due chiefly to the greed of

a clique of politicians; partly also to the fact that the North

misunderstood us and our black wards, even as we persist

in misunderstanding the "Yankee." But no gibbet rose in

that storm-swept waste; our very leaders now occupy

positions of honor and trust under the flag they defied. Let

us not requite the generosity of our erstwhile foes by an

attempt to tarnish their well-earned laurels. Rather

let us praise and emulate them--strive with them in a nobler

field than that of war. When the North and South blend in

one homogeneous people, as blend they must, when the

blood of the stern Puritan mingles with that of the dashing

Cavalier, then indeed will be a nation and a people at which

the world will stand agaze; for Northern vigor wedded to

Southern blood will

"Strike within the pulses like a god's,

To push us forward through a life of shocks,

Dangers and deeds, until endurance grows

Sinew'd with action, and the full grown will,

Circled through all experience, pure law,

Commeasure perfect freedom."

* * *

DOGMATISM THE MOTHER OF DOUBT.